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Lightning Or Legendry?: The Chase Vault Moving Coffin Mystery Revisited
The moving coffins of Barbados have been a staple subject of books on the unexplained for over a century, and yet no one has so far provided a wholly satisfactory solution to the mystery. BENJAMIN RADFORD argues that we might have been looking in the wrong place...
The Haunted Generation
Bob Fischer Rounds Up The Latest News From The Parallel Worlds Of Popular Hauntology...
The House On The Borderland In Search Of William Hope Hodgson
In his new book, EDWARD PARNELL goes in search of the ‘sequestered places’ of the British Isles and explores how these haunted landscapes shaped a kaleidoscopic spectrum of literature and cinema. Here, he arrives in Cardiganshire to look for the house in which the neglected master of weird fiction William Hope Hodgson wrote one of his greatest works.
Fortean Traveller: 117. The Mediæval Crime Museum, Rothenburg, Germany Fortean Traveller
STEVE TOASE feels the thumbscrews tighten as he explores a grisly collection exploring the history of mediæval torture and its relationship with the law
Where Ghosts Gather
In 1977, Usborne published World of the Unknown: Ghosts, the children’s book that inspired a generation of junior forteans. Four decades on, following a concerted fan campaign, the book is back in print... and the perpetually haunted BOB FISCHER tracked down its pleasantly surprised writer, Christopher Maynard, to discuss its genesis and unexpected impact.
A Bang On The Head
MARK GREENER explains how traumatic brain injury can change personality, creating serial killers and even vampires.
Blood-Suckers And Time-Travellers
A drunken warning from the future, plus violence against suspected vampires breaks out in Africa
Medical Bag
India’s electricity eating “Living Light Bulb” and the man who swallowed a traffic cone
It Happened To Me...
The road beyond the village drops and twists steeply, so I drove cautiously.
Monkey Business
Monkey selfie copyright battle ends at last
Living With Gods
DAVID V BARRETT visits a new exhibition at the British Museum with an emphasis on the universals of religious practice
Nosewitness the Smell of High Strangeness
Research into strange phenomena has tended to concentrate on visual and audio data, but witness accounts of everything from UFO encounters to monster sightings often contain intriguing references to supernatural scents and paranormal pongs. JOSHUA CUTCHIN argues that it’s time we took olfactory evidence for forteana seriously…
Searching For The Place Of The Skull
As pilgrims descend on the holy land to celebrate easter, Ted Harrison proffers a word of caution: if you’re looking for the location of jesus’s crucfixion and burial then, tradition aside, you need to investigate a growing list of competing sites. Just where exactly was golgotha?
Conjuring Asia
Marvel’s Doctor Strange is just the latest in a long line of seekers after truth who have headed to the Mystic East in search of spiritual enlightenment and supernatural powers.CHRIS GOTO-JONES recalls the Western magicians who transformed themselves into turbansporting seers, and examines the continuing appeal of Orientalism’s magical myth.
Pelting Presecution
A poltergeist that throws hot stones is making life a misery for a Bulawayo family
Out Of The Shadows
In an extract from a new book celebrating the history of Boscastle’s Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Professor Ronald Hutton introduces the photographs of Sara Hannant, which aim to bring a range of enigmatic objects from the museum’s unique collection to life.
The Face In The Window - Windowpane Ghosts And Lightning Daguerreotypes
One of the most fortean of lightning phenomena is the “lightning daguerreotype,” where a face or figure, often recognised as a particular deceased person, is mysteriously etched upon a windowpane. Chris Woodyard traces some of the fenestral flaps of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Bodies On Ice
Couple who went missing 75 years ago ... found by chance in thawing Swiss glacier
happy old christmas
you thought it was all over, but due to the orthodox refusal to accept the new fangled gregorian calendar, many people – from margate to memphis – will still be celebrating christmas in january. ted harrison goes in search of some stubborn old traditions...
Medical Bag
Fortean follicles equal permanent frizz for little girls and youthful locks for cancer patients
Modern Imperialists
Russian monarchists plan the Romanovs’ return; German nationalists rewrite history.
Archaeology
Paul sieveking reports on an enigmatic statuette from a museum vault, a neolithic ‘nativity scene’ that predates the birth of christ by 3,000 years and a claim that abraham vandalised turkey’s most ancient site.
High Priests And Kraken Soup
Richard Freeman in a recent opinion piece (FT357:55) discussed the fascinating life of Pierre Denys de Montfort, who, according to the article, died penniless in the gutter in Paris having seen his career destroyed because he argued for something that the “high priests of science deemed to be an old wives tale” – the existence of giant cephalopods (the taxonomic group that consists of squids, cuttlefishes and octopuses).
Classical Corner
FORTEANA FROM THE ANCIENT WORLD COMPILED
Blacktide Was Freuda Fraid of the Occult?
Sigmund freud’s new ‘science’ of psychoanalysis was meant to shine a wholly materialistic light on the mysteries of the human mind and banish the supernatural forever. But, asks Gary Lachman, was freud secretly troubled by the strange phenomena he publicly disavowed? And what about jung and the case of the poltergeist in the bookcase?
Foreseeing a Disaster?
Forgotten Dreams of Aberfan.
Tamám Shud The Mystery Of Australia's Unknown Man
On 1 December 1948, a man’s body was found on the beach of an Adelaide suburb. Who he was and how he died have remained a mystery for nearly 70 years, despite a trail of bizarre and tantalising clues. ROY BAINTON re-opens Australia’s weirdest cold case file.
Ancient Assassins?
BARRY BALDWIN sifts through the evidence at a pair of classical crime scenes in an attempt to figure out who done what to whom in a saga of political conspiracy and family plots that makes Game of Thrones look like The Waltons...
The Taking Of Dr Moore... And His Return
As he embarks upon a comprehensive survey of historical claims for levitation and other forms of supernatural transportation, BOB RICKARD will be posting occasional bulletins in FT on some interesting cases, such as this fairy abduction from 17th century Ireland.
Followers Of Female Jesus Busted
More members of the Church of Almighty God arrested as China cracks down on religious cult